After months of testing AC3.1 is finally available in the Mission Planner and GitHub.
Warning #1: If the vehicle is left landed (but armed) while in AltHold or Loiter mode for more than a few seconds, the vehicle may suddenly jump into the air the moment the pilot raises the throttle above zero. The reason is the baro altitude may fall while the vehicle is sitting on the ground. In AC3.2 this bug is fixed because we reset the target before take-off.
Warning #2: Motors will spin (slowly) by default as soon as the copter is armed! You can switch this feature off by setting the MOT_SPIN_ARMED parameter to zero.
Warning #3: if you see "Bad Gyro" on the HUD then you may have a blown 3.3V regulator. See this thread for details.
Warning #4: if you use a sonar set the SONAR_GAIN parameter to 0.8 or lower
Warning #5: Trad Heli users should now connect their main rotor ESC to APM's RC8 output
Warning #6: Trad Heli BUG causes loss of collective control in ACRO mode if swash type set to flybarred (i.e. not flybarless). Will be fixed in AC3.2.
The major improvements over AC3.0.1 are (full list here):
1. Pixhawk support (Tridge & PX4 development team)
2. Autotune of Roll and Pitch gains (Leonard/Randy)
3. Drift mode (Jason)
4. Improved Acro (Rob/Leonard) and new Sport mode (Leonard)
5. Arming, Take-off, Land in Loiter or AltHold
6. TradHeli improvements (Rob) including:
a) support for direct drive tail rotors
b) smoother ramp-up of main rotor
c) reduced collective for better control in stabilize mode (STAB_COL_MIN, STAB_COL_MAX params)
7. Support for SingleCopter (Bill King)
8. Performance improvements resolve AltHold troubles for Hexa & Octacopters
9. Safety Improvements:
a) GPS Glitch detection (Randy)
b) Motors spin when armed (Jonathan Challinger)
c) crash detector shuts off motors if copter flipped for 2secs
d) batt failsafe option to RTL instead of LAND, gps failsafe option to trigger AltHold instead of Land
e) more pre-arm checks of inertial nav speed,
10. Bug fixes:
a) optical flow working again (although performance is still not great because not integrated with inertial navigation)
b) ROI working (use DO_SET_ROI command)
How to upgrade:
Click on the MissionPlanner's Initial Setup >> Install Firmware screen. The version numbers should appear as "ArduCopter-3.1", then click the appropriate frame icon and it should upgrade as per usual.
Special thanks to Marco and the many beta testers on the AC3.0.1 thread who put their copters at risk during the testing of this new version and uncovered many problems so that you don't have to! Here are some of their videos: loiter in wind, patio sonar, autotune, autotune2, roi, beach, acro, vrbrain, tricopter, train spotting, radio failsafe, the tree, double loiter
If you haven't seen it recently, please check out the ArduCopter wiki.
Feel free to post comments below and we're going to use the new APM Forum for support issues so please post your support requests there.
Replies
still seeing 3.0.1 firmware. but I loaded wot was 3.0.1 and I guess it loaded 3.1 coz I got the warning about motors turn slow when armed but I cant see the MOT_SPIN to change it. so tested and motors don't turn so I don't know which firmware im using.
Did anybody try v3.1 in APM1 ?
tangtl
sorry for your crash.
First time loiter with 3.1 and 5010 620kv motors.. thx
http://youtu.be/NvHe5NrXF2c
Ok I think GPS (Loiter mode) makes my H4 approach ground at sub optimal angle and speed.
Happened on -rcX October 31 (rainy afternoon) and again today when filming icing.
Arducopter 3.1
Stab mode and Alt Hold were just fine.
The moment I switch to Loiter mode copter flies forward and hits tree branches. Then it flies in the opposite direction and touches the wall. Crash landing. Will need to replace 2 carbon props due to tips become shorter. Minute after that crash I had it up in the air and filmed it all in stab mode. Do not trust that GPS. GPS track was weird when I tick "show map" in log browser. May be with that water on the trees GPS signal was not strong enough?
Looking for advice to get that GPS stop crashing copter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjjiuRTke8w
2013-12-22 20-00.log
Is the optical flow sensor really fixed? Has anyone tested this? I've installed one in my new indoor quad (build log), but the terminal test only shows 0/0 values, and OF_Loiter behaviour doesn't differ from AltHold (as I suspect is normal with no optical flow data). I've tested the hardware using the optical flow test .hex on the board and the Python sensor image viewer script as described on the wiki; it was a bit difficult getting the script to work, but I eventually succeeded - and it shows the image and computes motion correctly, so it looks like an issue with 3.1.
Are there some tips for tuning alt_hold? I find that I get a drop in altitude when moving forward or back and yes my APM has a cover and the baro is covered with a piece of foam inside the APM cover. I also find that the throttle control is very sensitive when not in alt_hold, it lags which is expected perhaps but is very hard to keep at a constant height.
Another question, is it possible to have Alt_hold active in Drift mode? If not can this be please be considered? Flying FPV in drift mode is great except for keeping height which is not easy anyway while FPV'ing.
Thanks for the answer. Yes I realize it’s difficult to please everyone and every condition and I think in this case it’s best that everyone routes the main rotor ESC through the APM. I was just caught by the change from 2.9b to 3.1, allowing collective pitch while disarmed and I was not used to that.
!!!
But please make a Warning for this problem at the beginning of this post, so hopefully my heli will be the only one destroyed from this condition.
!!!
You right the motor dos not start unarmed, if you are routing the ESC through the APM.
My 450 is that way, but on my 600 the ESC was direct wired from the RX, but with 2.9b it was never a problem, because you did not get collective until armed. I was used to that and the easy conversion of the 450 from 2.9b to 3.1 made me unwary. I just uploaded 3.1 to the 450 with no change to parameters, and it flew great. And this I did with the 600, and he flew like a dream with no change to parameters until I switched out of Stab to AltHold in an unarmed condition.
!!!
But the big question is why is a change in flight mode out of Stab not just ignored without any change in behavior, if not armed???
!!!
I had a go today with my F450 test frame.
Today the wind was quit gusty so ideal for some 3.1 testing.
I must say I was (am) impressed.
The quad behaved without any problem in winds.
Loiter was spot on and RTL worked flawless.
Nice job to the developers !
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